


Paid

by shaenie



Category: LOTRPS
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-01-10
Updated: 2003-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contre La Montre challenge.  Got it in 43 minutes, and then frantically beta'd by Mistermaki (my hero)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paid

Dom is sitting against an ugly potted plant, knees drawn up, bottle of Guinness clasped between his hands. The bottle had been cold an hour ago, but has been warmed, now, by the skin of his hands. The liquid inside is only marginally cooler.

They have finished the re-shoots for the second movie, The Two Towers, and being all together again is just what Dom had wanted it to be. They are all sitting around in a suite, obtained by PJ for the wrap party, and it's their last day. Earlier there had been a lot of drinking and laughing and cuddling, but now there is only a lot of silence, even though everyone is still here. None of them are really drunk.

The end of the shoot itself had been terrible. The end of re-shoots for Fellowship had been both better and worse. The end of this little stint feels like the end of the fucking world to Dom.

He isn't sure why that is, exactly, only that it is. He wants to cry or drink until he's passed out, or maybe get into his rented car and drive to the airport and just get the fuck out of here before the silence kills him.

He stands up, and is not pleased to discover that, no, he isn't at all drunk. The potted plant behind him is possibly the ugliest living thing he's ever seen, half-shrub and half-tree. He grimaces at it, and pours what's left in the bottle into the black soil surrounding it's roots.

He makes his way back to the bathroom and gets rid of the rest of the Guinness. When he's done, standing in the gray half-light of the hall, he can see into the enormous living area. It's only a few yards away, a rectangle of brighter light, and past the portal, within the brightness, it doesn't look like anyone has even moved since he got up. He can't see all of them. His view is framed by the doorway and that's all right because he doesn't need to see all of them. He knows them, knows who they are and where they'll be, both now and after they leave here again, separate, back to their real lives.

There will be only one more thing like this, one more interlude, and the thought makes him ache dully. He pushes the ache away, and it goes fairly easily, because he's used to it.

He walks back toward the doorway-framed light. Where else is there to go?

Apparently there is somewhere else, though, because on his left, as he's walking, there is a doorway-framed darkness, which Dom supposes leads to one of the bedrooms. He doesn't know who is staying in these rooms; PJ hasn't said. There is a voice inside this one, however, and it says his name.

Dom stops and looks inside, but he can only see the darkness. He looks back toward the light, and for a moment, he's looking into Orlando's eyes, and Orlando's eyes are dark and also not drunk. Orlando is neither frowning nor smiling, Orlando merely *is*. He's looking at Dom in the gray while Dom looks at him in the light.

Dom steps into the framed darkness.  
"What are you doing in here?" Dom asks. He feels the darkness pressing on his skin. It feels cool and heavy and oddly comforting.

"I love him," the voice says, instead of answering the question, and Dom winces, but it's dark and he can't see anything, so it's a good bet that the owner of the voice can't see him wincing either, and that makes it all right. Not an 'all is right with the world' all right, but an 'it's ok for him to hurt me if he can't *see* that he's hurt me' all right. He takes another step into the dark, and it feels like he's doing it against his will.

A hand brushes his arm, and Dom's fingers curl involuntarily, grasping at nothing in the dark.

The hand is on his chest, suddenly, holding onto the lapel of Dom's jacket. Dom feels like he hasn't breathed in at least an hour, like this room is some kind of vacuum and he's only just noticed.

"If I didn't, though," the voice says - and there is a body there, too now, and it's disturbingly close, and Dom can feel breath that isn't his own (*he* hasn't breathed in at least an hour) puffing against his face - "If I didn't, I would want . . . I would want . . ."

Dom hears himself inhale, but the breath doesn't feel like it ever makes it to his lungs. "What?" he says, and the sound is muffled by the dark, or maybe by the weird vacuum in this room, or maybe by the way Dom's heartbeat suddenly sounds like it's coming from inside his head, nestled right between his ears, rather than from his chest, where it belongs.

"I would want to fuck you into the floor," he tells Dom.

Dom shudders, hands groping, and he half-thinks his fingers will curl around nothing but darkness again, but instead he feels flesh, silk covering the hard angles of hipbones, and Dom holds on to it and pulls it to him. Arms curl around his neck and urge his face downward slightly and there isn't any of the bumping or confusion that his mind associates with encounters like this, in the darkness.

He kisses and is being kissed back, he presses against the body in front of him, and feels hipbones and hard flesh pressing back against him, grinding against him with little, stuttery movements and very soft gasps. There is a hand jerking his shirt out of his pants urgently, then sliding up from belly to chest, and fingertips press into the hollow of his throat. Moans fall from his mouth and are lost in the mouth beneath his.

Outside, in the gray of the hallway, someone walks by. The footsteps sound abnormally loud to Dom.

Suddenly he is holding only darkness against him.

He looks toward the doorway-framed gray of the hall and sees the darkness form into a figure, a silhouette, and then turn to the left, toward the light.

Dom doesn't move from where he's standing. The darkness is still heavy, like his breath in his lungs, like his hands, hanging at his sides, like the weight in his chest that he refuses to put a name to.

******

Dom leaves the after party for The Two Tower's premiere as soon as he decently can. He has spoken only to those who have spoken to him, spending most of his time at the bar, scrawling on a napkin. The glittering throng of people make him feel dizzy.

His room is in the same hotel as the party, and by the time he reaches it, the dizziness has receded, and he only feels tired. He is anticipating the quiet darkness of his room. He had left the curtains drawn tightly shut and the lights carefully off so that he could enter that darkness immediately upon escape.

When he slides the key card and opens the door, light spills onto him and he thinks he might be in the wrong room. He walks in a few steps, sees his suitcase open on a dresser and his clothes from the day before still piled in a chair. That's all right, that's as it should be, so he takes another few steps inside.

The bed is in it's own little alcove, which Dom rather likes, because in the charcoal darkness of the room, when the lights are out and the curtains are drawn, the alcove and the bed are swathed in an even deeper darkness, ebony darkness.

It's not dark now, though, and the alcove is well lit, nearly as bright as the room, and there is someone in the bed, sitting tailor fashion. He is naked, and all that light is reflected painfully off of pale, pale skin. He is looking at Dom, and in the next hundred or so seconds, Dom cannot breathe. He thinks he wants to turn out all the lights, that this - whatever this is - would be so much safer in the dark, but he doesn't move. Dom cannot move.

He thinks he might be able to speak, and opens his mouth to do so, but the man in his bed hisses: "Shutthefuckup," all one word, rushed and urgent, and Dom closes his mouth with a snap.

He closes his eyes and pushes his hand into his hair, all gel-spiked, so that it feels sharp and brittle, like it might break. It doesn't break. It bends against his hand, and springs back into place.

He hears a little gasping sound from the bed and opens his eyes. Insanely, the man says: "Do you have any money?"

Wha . . .? Dom thinks, but he only slides his wallet out of his inside jacket pocket and looks inside to see what's there. He's still stinging from the "shutthefuckup" so he merely nods.

"Pay me," he says.

Dom just stares at him, bewildered.

"I'm an actor," he says, snarling, impatient. "People pay me to be someone else." He grips his head in both hands, fingers clenching and pulling in his hair, and is silent for a moment. When he looks back to Dom, his eyes are desperate and wild. "Pay me, Dom."

And Dom gets it.

He reaches into his wallet, ignoring his shaking hands, and just takes everything in it and throws it on the table. He doesn't know how much it is, exactly, maybe a couple of thousand dollars, because he's never had much money, and he kind of likes the idea of carrying it around, so he has been. Maybe he'll outgrow that.

Dom drops his wallet and his jacket, his fingers are already on the buttons of his shirt. On the bed, the man has risen to his knees, and his face is open and wanting, and the finger-clenching of seconds ago is only a memory. Dom flings his shirt away and is on the bed, half on top of the other man, grinding down while being ground up against.

"Dom, Dom, Dom," he chants, and Dom wants to answer in kind, but knows better than to say his name. He is someone else, after all. Dom has paid him to be someone else. Paid him so he *could* be someone else.

And Dom is a cunt, because he doesn't care. The light is in his eyes and on his skin, and Dom wants to touch him all of the places that the light is touching him, so he does. Because Dom can't say his name, he gasps instead: "Want you."

He laughs airily. "Doesn't anyone say 'please' anymore?" But maybe his voice is too hoarse and throaty to be truly airy, and maybe his eyes are wide and intent on Dom's face, like he's memorizing every second of this while pretending to be someone else.

"I don't have to say please," Dom growls. "I already fucking paid you."

And he thinks: I'm such a fucking cunt.

He expects to be shoved away, off, and he thinks he would deserve it, but instead the man's eyes half-close, the sexiest thing Dom has ever seen, and he hisses in Dom's ear: "Yessssss."

Dom doesn't speak again, but keeps his eyes open every second, so he can remember later, when he is gone, remember not who he's fucking, but who he *paid*.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [GloriaMundi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi) Log in to view. 




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